| 1942 was the
year when the British Indian government had to deploy a substantial
section of the Allied forces in India for suppressing the Gandhi-led
August 1942 rebellion. Japan and the INA could give little help.
Indeed by November 1942, differences erupted
between Mohan Singh, the General Officer-in-Command of the
INA, and the Japanese government. Mohan Singh took the inexplicable
decision of dissolving the INA before he was stripped of his
position.
Mohan Singh's decision in the crucial year
of 1942 cannot be wholly explained by his desire to defend
INA autonomy from Japanese interference. Indeed, his differences
with the Japanese military were precipitated by the desertions
of several INA officers to the British side. Because these
officers were especially close to Mohan Singh, the Japanese
military wondered if Mohan Singh had been influenced by the
strategic reverse Japan had suffered in 1942.
Bose was given extremely perilous facilities
of travel by submarines through the Atlantic Ocean at a time
when the submarine warfare was at its peak. In Europe, west
Asia, Soviet Russia and in Indo-Pacific region, the Axis Powers
had begun to lose their previous strategic superiority.
Even so, arriving in east Asia at the
end of an extremely dangerous journey, Subhas Bose effected
a miraculous change in the INA and in the freedom movement
in Southeast Asia.
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